We Are Back!

We had a really nice time in New York. But I must tell you about my epiphany-I can now call Virginia...home! Yes! I mean let's get honest-I will always be a New Yorker. I will always cherish my beloved Yankees and Giants. I will always prefer a New York bagel and pizza to any other. I will always drive fast and without regard for others on the road, while changing radio stations and answering the phone and sipping coffee (don't ask-it's a talent). I will always have my accent. I do know though-that I made the best decision for Preston and I. I mean I am going back-hello new Yankee Stadium people! Derek Jeter in the flesh!

I just hope this year brings more opportunities for advancement in my career (I am a contracting attorney now and love the firm I am contracting with). I also hope that this year brings about those advancements so I can purchase my first home. I also hope that this year I can find someone special to start a new life with-2009 is also going to hopefully bring about more "Kim" time. Preston is my life and will always be my life, but I can stop bringing him with me to the salon and instead get a pedicure and hire a babysitter for Heaven's sake. Not to get overly sentimental but life in New York was hard at times. I had a great big apartment, but no parking. That meant a lot of times walking three blocks with Pres in any weather. It meant taking bags up and down the steps in shifts and then up the elevator in shifts. It was expensive! I know that I can have a wonderful life here and still be able to visit----because my parents' apartment on the Upper East Side is fab-u-lous. I love you NYC, but I am starting to love Virginia too! And in the words of Sinatra-"If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere." So thank you New York for making me the person I am today.

It just is amazing to me that in four months how the stress of bumper to bumper traffic has gone by the way of acid washed jeans. I literally was shaking through our crawl through the Lincoln Tunnel. Preston wanted to go on the subway-so we took it to my parents' apartment. So that meant Penn Station (34th Street West Side) to the A train-which was not running (after ten minutes of waiting) because of a medical emergency at 14th Street. So back upstairs, through Penn to the 2/3 train. One stop up to Times Square. Through that station to the Shuttle to grand Central (East Side). Through Grand Central to the 4/5 uptown to 86th Street and Lexington. Up and down twelve flights between the three trains and ONE only ONE person offered to help. And forget the elevators. Apparently people use these as urinals. So a stroller on a pee filled elevator was not going to happen. Once at 86th I had to walk to 82nd Street and East End Avenue-a bit of a hike. Then my heel broke. (I break more heels in NYC than anyone I know). So it was off to Bloomingdale's (this time in a cab from my parents' to 59th Street) and the sticker shock of every pair of shoes over $150. (I did score a great pair reduced all the way to $40)! Just another day in NYC!

It was so nice seeing everyone and Preston loved being spoiled. We had a wonderful Italian dinner at Tony's and saw the tree. I must say it was not the biggest nor the most robust tree that has ever stood in Rock Center, but it was nice. I will leave you with some pictures. It was so darn crowded I could not even move into St. Patrick's Cathedral. Here are some pics:

Loving Spencer from Aunt Tinka and Uncle Steve one of the many gifts he got from his generous aunts and uncles!
Preston and his cousin Nicole (Charlie's stepdaughter) at dinner in Long Island.

The big tree-and some dude yawning-another picking his ear-gross!

The angels-to get a good shot now you have to pay Rockefeller Center for their picture. Of course you do.

You can see St. Patrick's in the top of the picture-the steeple anyway.

Here is where the NBC Studios are. The studios for 30 Rock are also here.

This is about as good as it gets without having to pay for the picture.
How awesome is the Cartier store? You could not get near it since their windows were their jewels coming out of boxes!
Preston on Jet Blue from JFK to Richmond! Happy New Year everyone! May all your dreams and wishes come true and I wish everyone health, happiness and success in the New Year!

Off to New York

I cannot believe I am posting twice in a couple of days, but I wanted to leave you with some shots from Christmas. I will have to add more to Facebook too. We are off to New York and we will check in upon our return!

Here is Preston and I putting out magic reindeer food. His teachers gave each child a bag and said to spread it on the front lawn for the reindeer. I mean when you think about it, most kids leave a carrot for Rudolph. There are wight other reindeer who are pretty darn hungry. So they got oats---and glitter.

We enjoyed Christmas Eve with Sam, Jordana and Baby Maddie...and lots of food! Preston was such a good boy with Maddie and talks to her and rocked her carseat. Usually there is a lot of jealousy with other babies, but he seems to love Maddie.

I took a video of Preston's first reaction to Christmas. Don't mind my voice echoing and I am half laughing, half with tears in my eyes for him.

Santa came for Preston! (Note that those gifts actually past the truck are NOT Preston's. There are others that were good this year).
Love the chocolate around his mouth!

Merry Christmas

Well, vacation has started, Preston is bouncing off the walls, gifts are 95% wrapped and we are ready for the arrival of Santa Claus tomorrow night. Oh and we both feel great since we are on antibiotics. We both came down with a cold/throat infection last week. This is a major accomplishment since Preston has not been on antibiotics (other than finger ointment for his hematoma) since February! Go Preston's immune system! He also had his three year check up and is measuring at the tippy top of the achon chart so he had a great growing year!

Tomorrow Jordana, Sammy and Baby Madeline are coming for Christmas Eve. Then the day after Christmas it is off to New York! (Oh Tony's I can taste your delicious food in my mind).Hopefully Preston will go to bed tomorrow at a decent hour while my father and I put together Thomas tracks. We have decided that all trucks are coming out of their respective boxes. Maybe except the one from Aunt Mel which is fifteen feet long and truly designated as an outdoor vehicle. When Preston opens a gift he demands it out of the box pretty quickly and nothing kills the momentum and enthusiasm of a new gift like unscrewing 12 screws and cutting barbed wire to release a $15 truck. I mean really. Just in case you are thinking of shoplifting-don't go for any Tonka trucks. Apparently bondage personnel put these things together! We only got one little Figure 8 Thomas set with the station. I would like to ensure that Preston is playing with said tracks in a month before I invest $400 into the Lift and Load set. He loves playing with the trains but on tables, chairs, windowsills, so we'll see. I am SO excited for his face when he sees his scooter! Thank Heavens it is going to be in the 60s on Christmas so he can ride outside. That was always a Christmas buzzkill-getting a bike and there was snow or leftover mounds of sand and salt from the snow on the street so you got to ride your new bike in April.

My mother also bought Preston a gingerbread train. He had a ball making the train and eating all the candy as he went! Merry Christmas everyone!
And for everyone who wanted to see the finalized Christmas card-I literally only have one card left so next year blogging buddies-we will all have to exchange addresses early on! Here are the pictures I picked! It was an agonizing decision! (In the first one I cropped it so you do not see his Pull Up)!

Our First VA Tree

I have mentioned that my dad is totally Clark Griswald when it comes to Christmas. Seriously. One year he rented a cherry picker to put up lights. Like an construction site, full on cherry picker. Like the phone company! I do believe that year Even Melski's dad admitted defeat. I mean really who rents a cherry picker to put up lights? My dad's dream came true this year. I truly believe he built this house specifically to put up a ridiculously large Christmas tree. What do you do when you have twenty foot ceilings? Get a twelve foot tree! How does one decorate said tree-well the cherry picker would have come in handy-but instead we had a ladder. Here is the Raab house tree 2008!

And here are some random photos from the weekend out and about. Notice Preston and my parents near the only tree in Richmond possibly bigger than my dad's-who is already trying to figure out how to get that one on the front lawn next year (hee hee).

And just to prove that my son can be casual and dirty after a long day at school:

New York Pizza-A Photo Essay

Preston's lunch yesterday through pictures: (Captions under each picture)

Mommy has given me New York pizza for lunch. I am a little skeptical. I mean we live in Virginia. How did they get the pizza here? Looks like NY pizza though. I mean I know I cannot read a map, but I am pretty sure New York and Virginia are too separate places. They are probably pretty far apart (I mean if they are not pretty sucky of my relatives to not visit me every weekend). Wonder what Gordon and Henry think? (bottom left corner)

Ok I am gonna give this a whirl. I mean worst case scenario it's just sub-par Central Virginia pizza, but I mean I am totally famished. It's twelve and I have not stuffed my face since...at least ten thirty.

Thumbs up! This is good pizza. Gordon and Henry did not steer me wrong. Now this is what I call a lunch.

And two thumbs up to Papa for bringing us the pizza (and Aunt Tinka for cutting it up and wrapping it in aluminum in such an anal retentive way).

Happy Birthday Preston!

My baby is three! Three! Where did the time go? The day prior to his birthday we went to go see Dr. Ain. We literally walked in and out. Obviously the holidays are not times when most people schedule orthopedic surgery so the waiting room was so quiet except for another precious little girl who was there to see Dr. Ain as well. His x-rays look great-slight bowing in the legs and a perfect back! Preston was so excited that he got to see his bones on the screen. Dr. Ain was impressed with Preston and now we don't have to go back for another year!

It took Preston all day to open his gifts. He gets very overwhelmed and usually just needs three things and that is it. I thought he would have torn into gifts this year, but not so much. That should make Christmas a week long event with all the crap I already bought!

After breakfast we went to the Richmond Christmas Parade. It was really cute-it was no Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but really captivating for the kids. There were balloons, floats, clowns, horses and of course fire trucks and police which were the hit for Preston. (And the flying panda balloon-I have no idea why but he took quite a liking to the panda). We met up with Roman and Anni and adorable Ethan. It was really fun even though after three hours in the cold poor Preston and I were both shivering. There was just this huge discussion on achon kids and sweating on POLP. That was Preston as a baby only. He grew out of that faze quickly-I have the kid who is always cold. "Mommy I'm cold. " His impression of shivering is so funny too.

We also had a big cake and I bought him his birthday balloon (a tradition in our house). The past two years I have had these huge parties and although they were a lot of fun, it was actually nice to be low key this year. The cool thing about his last two parties was I did them at my house with my family and friends. Emily knows how much food we would have! It was so much fun and I would pick a theme. This year, being that we are new down here, I was not too keen on having a party and feeding all the parents whose names I don't even know. So what I did instead was take Preston out and let him pick out party plates, cups, napkins and hats for school along with bubbles for each kid. Then we baked cupcakes together for his party in school. Apparently his party was a HUGE hit. I think next year we will go all out again when I at least know who it is I am feeding :-) Here is Preston making his cupcakes. I wanted to take Preston tonight to the Living Nativity but he was so cranky from spending three hours this morning out in the cold I was not going to push it. Here is Preston with his cake. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend.

May all your wishes come true baby!

Thanksgiving Weekend!

What a weekend! We had a full house with Anna and Chris and Katie and Steve. It was so much fun! This was our first Thanksgiving in the new home. Baking was great in this new kitchen! Of course there were more desserts than there were people. We always had between 15-20 people and this year there were eight-but we still made enough for 15-20 people. We spent Friday afternoon at Maymont Park and Preston was thrilled that the otter was awake this time. We had a great dinner out on Friday-my parents watched Preston while we went to Yamoto, a hibachi place. Chris and Steve definitely thought they were cool because they drank Saki bombs. I could not since I was the designated driver of my dad's bitchin' rented Impala for the weekend (hey we needed to rent one car without a big bulky Britax taking up half the back seat and his car is still in New York). My mother and I ventured to Kohl's on Friday. Not a 4am. First off can I talk about the Kohl's advertisement? If I was to get up at 4am to go to Kohl's to get a Mosaic candle for $3.99 versus the retail price of $4.99 would I be going in three inch red patent leather heels, a top hat, and a jacket over my negligee? I don't wear negligee to bed, ok I don't wear negligee ever, so there would be the issue. More like me trudging in at 4am in flannel plaid pants and they'd be happy I remembered to brush my teeth, let alone grab a fancy chapeau! Really. Saturday my father and Katie and Chris put up the Christmas lights (yup we "Griswald" it-well not that intense, but my dad loves lights) and went to a big family dinner at Glory Days!

I thought I would share a look at Preston's Thanksgiving photos past to present. Thanksgiving is also a big time for me. I had been pregnant and ready to give birth in 2005-and that Thanksgiving was horrendous. It was my favorite holiday and I thought my son would never see it. So the following year, five months after my ex husband walked out, I heard Al Roker say "Let's have a parade." I had Preston in my arms and just lost it. It was pretty emotional. Let's just say Al gets me every year. So here is Preston 2006, 2007 and now 2008!

Here are some more pics from the weekend!




And a much anticipated Preston video! Enjoy!

Aunt Melski's Visit!

We had such a great weekend. Mel (who is affectionately Melski), is Preston's godmother and my oldest friend. More like a sister, I mean it's been twenty three years and for a good eighteen of those years, we lived across the street from each other. We both went to the same college, both went to law school and worked at two law firms together. I really wish my albums from yesteryear (yes I used the term yesteryear) were not packed in a storage facility otherwise I would scan a few of those pics from our Sweet Sixteen parties when we thought we were beyond cool.

Mel came Friday and we had such a great weekend. Two great dinners out together, a shopping frenzy on Friday and we toured the area. I approved her gift for Preston-a four foot long truck/carrier. He is going to love it! She saw Preston's school and met his teacher. She also got to witness first hand that although Preston is ridiculously adorable, he has more than his fair share of "moments" shall I say. In fact when Preston got "rude" and would not give Mel a kiss last night, she told him she would have to find another little boy to love, to which he replied, "Yeah Melski-you find a new Preston." I am going to miss her and she'd better come back to the TDM very soon. Love you Skiier.

Preston also went to his friend's b-day party complete with a bounce house. I am sure the following pictures will be a POLP nightmare-how dare me allow my achon child who is three with no neurological complications to partake in harmless "jumping" (which consisted of him running and tripping) in a bounce house. Like all you blogging achon moms who used an exersaucers-GASP! Shame on all of us. (*Please note that the aforementioned does not reflect this mom's point of view and I therefore leave you with amazing action shots)!
Today we did our last minute Thanksgiving baking shopping and I had to buy dinner rolls for Preston's "feast" at school tomorrow. This mom just did not have time to volunteer mashed potatoes this year. Preston also "baked" today-you know the pre-cut cookies where he just has to throw them on a pan. He loves this! We then watched the Jets kill the Titans and then my beloved Big Blue kick some Cardinal butt! We ended the day taking his Christmas card photos-I was hoping that the ones from school would be so cute that I would not have to do the photo shoot, but alas, the proofs came back with Preston's hair parted to the side and a big ol' snot in his nostril. Mel swears you cannot see it in one of the pics, but his hair looked pretty bad. Got to love the Christmas card shoot-the digital camera with it's pause, Preston being oh so cooperative, my mother begging him to sit with her hands loaded with Hershey Kisses...but in the end I have great shots and now have to narrow it down to the winner. hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. We are awaiting our guests on Wednesday. Love to all!